KIRSTY WARK’S political neutrality as a leading BBC presenter was called into doubt yesterday because of her close friendship with Jack McConnell, the Scottish First Minister.

Opposition politicians questioned the fitness of the Newsnight presenter to host political programmes in an unbiased way given her long-term links to Scotland’s Labour leader and other party figures, including the late Donald Dewar.

The row erupted after Ms Wark, 49, invited Mr McConnell and his wife, Bridget, to spend new year with her and her husband, Alan Clements, at their villa in Alaro, Majorca.

Political critics claimed that the friendship between Ms Wark and Mr McConnell compromised the public’s perception of the BBC’s political neutrality, particularly because Ms Wark is the traditional election-night anchor in Scotland.

But yesterday a BBC spokeswoman said: “The BBC cannot dictate who people go on holiday with and we do not have a policy on who they can have a personal friendship with.

“When looking at potential conflicts of interest it falls to individual programme editors to make a judgment. In this case it is a private and personal matter. Ms Wark is on holiday with a friend and she would not have to ask us whether she could go.”

Ms Wark yesterday defended her holiday arrangements. “Our families have been friendly for more than 16 years. At no point has that friendship or any other interfered with my ability to do my job in a fair and objective manner,” she told The Herald newspaper. “It is ludicrous to suggest that because you are friendly with someone you automatically share their political views.”

Yesterday the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Conservatives said that the BBC should act to ensure that its political coverage was not only impartial but was also perceived to be so by the public.

Michael Matheson, the SNP culture spokesman, said: “Kirsty Wark is quite within her rights to have Mr McConnell as a close family friend. The problem is that when a journalist of her standing is linked to the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, the perception is created that she may be politically biased.

“If Jeremy Paxman went on holiday with Tony Blair, eyebrows would be raised. The BBC has to recognise the sensitivities involved and take action to ensure they are seen as politically neutral.”

The Scottish Conservatives said that the friendship between Ms Wark and Mr McConnell cast a new light on her refusal to release taped interviews with Mr Dewar and Enric Miralles, the architect of the Scottish Parliament, to the Fraser inquiry, which investigated the eventual £431 million cost of the building, and Mr McConnell’s failure to support measures to force her to do so.

A Conservative spokesman said: “Jack McConnell said he would do everything he could to help the Holyrood inquiry, but then led the opposition to Scottish Conservative moves to make the taped interviews available. (He) was asked once before to choose between the public interest and Kirsty Wark. Maybe the public now knows why he chose the latter.”

The interviews will be shown soon in the BBC documentary The Gathering Place, which cost £800,000 to make — double the original estimate.

A spokesman for the First Minister said that where he holidayed was a private matter.

The claustrophobic nature of the Scottish Establishment means that Ms Wark has close connections to several powerful figures north of the Border.

She is thought to be one of the wealthiest media figures in Britain. Her salary is £250,000 and she also has earnings through the production company Wark Clements, which she runs with her husband, and which has multimillion-pound contracts with the BBC.

Mr Dewar chose her as a judge to select an architect for the Parliament building and during the subsequent Fraser inquiry it transpired that she had been a bridesmaid at the wedding of John Campbell, the inquiry QC, who was in charge of questioning her.

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